finish my novel

I actually have a scene-by-scene breakdown now of all seven chapters. Chapter 2, for example, has 9 scenes in it.

I’ve only written 3.

Curses!

As long as I’m doing my job with answering the phones, sorting the mail, and buzzing people in, they pretty much let me do what I want at my desk. When I’m not studying/doing homework for my summer classes, a lot of the time I’m working on my novel. I’ve done more with it in the past seven or so weeks that I’ve been on this job than I’ve done in years. I have to write the material out by hand, because I don’t qualify for D-net access, but that’s OK, my usual process is to start out writing it by hand anyway. Then I go home and eventually type it up.
I’ve been doing a lot of this this past week (been procrastinating about the classes), and I think I’m kind of on a roll right now. Today I’ve been letting my husband and stepson do stuff without me (they’re currently at a cookout at my inlaws’) and I’ve been digging into those revisions I was dreading as of my entries 7 months ago. I now have the first chapter up to snuff, which means in terms of sheer chapter count, I’m one-seventh done. Of course, the chapters are going to be different lengths, so that’s not an accurate gauge, but it’s what I’ve got for now. I think what I’m going to do next is to revise my outline/scene breakdown, then plunge back in to chapter 2. I’m pretty sure there’s some material for that chapter that I wrote last year that I never typed up…

I am so daunted. The amount of revising that has to be done just keeps piling up – years worth of material no longer applicable.

According to MS Word, over the course of the past 5 years I have written 131 pages, double-spaced.

That’s not really that much.

And a lot of it needs to be edited, severely, because my concepts have changed radically since I started the project.

I don’t know how I’m going to do this.

I’ve decided that, for the first time in years, I’m going to make a concerted effort to finish my novel. The goal is to write at least a little bit every day. When I told him about this intent yesterday, PB asked me if I’m willing to try to get it published. For the first time in years (again), I said ‘yes’.